LAHORE, Sept 9: The Punjab leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party is understood to have suggested to party chairperson Benazir Bhutto to return home in the third week of October, preferably on 21st or 22nd of the next month.

According to senior PPP leaders, reports that have been sent to Ms Bhutto also suggest that she should prefer the Islamabad airport for landing in Pakistan in the morning and later head a procession to Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh for a public meeting the same evening. The reports also propose to the PPP leader to take G T Road for her journey to Lahore a few days later and terminate the first round of her campaign by holding a public meeting at Minar-i-Pakistan.

The leaders told this correspondent requesting anonymity that Ms Bhutto’s return home was linked with the Election Commission of Pakistan announcing a schedule either for the presidential or general election. They are of the opinion the PPP chairperson will return to Pakistan within a week of the announcement of either of the election schedules. For this, they claim, the party has been fully mobilised across the country and all arrangements for according a rousing reception to their leader made.

A PPP meeting here on Saturday mooted a proposal that Ms Bhutto should announce her return to the country immediately after Nawaz Sharif’s. But, the proposal was scuttled by a majority of the participants coming from Lahore and four other districts around, when Punjab PPP president Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi told them that the party’s central executive committee had charted out a strategy covering all political and electoral aspects and the ‘plan was working’.

Why the homecoming of Benazir Bhutto has been linked with the election schedule, the PPP leaders say the party would like to wait and see what plan Gen Musharraf has drawn for the coming elections.

If presidential elections are held before parliamentary elections, this will mean Gen Musharraf insists on his re-election for another five-year term as president from the same assemblies while retaining his uniform, they say and add in such a situation, the PPP will be left with no choice but to go all out against an `unconstitutional’ presidential election. If such a situation arises, the PPP legislators will quit the Senate, the National Assembly and provincial assemblies, and even the party nazims and members of local councils resigning en bloc across the country, they say.

According to them, the move will be followed by a political campaign to stall the president’s re-election. The presence of Ms Bhutto will certainly infuse a new life in the democratic struggle, the PPP leaders hope.

If Gen Musharraf decides to hold parliamentary elections before the presidential ones, the situation will be different and ‘will suit the PPP plan”.

The party is bracing itself for a peaceful democratic struggle and is also prepared for the constitutional transition. In either of the situations, the PPP chairperson’s presence in the country is necessary and she is mindful of the role which she is required to play.

Above all, the leaders say, the PPP chairperson is returning home to field her party in the fight against religious extremism, terrorism and the creeping danger of Talibanisation of the country. This is a global requirement and inevitable for the peace in the world and South Asia in particular, they say.